Classical Culture and Modern Masculinity

Daniel Orrells

Description

Since the middle of the eighteenth century, the classical world has been seen as foundational and exemplary to Western civilization. However, the Greeks never invaded and colonised western and northern Europe the way the Romans did, and, conversely, Greece was a difficult place to reach for modern travellers well into the nineteenth century. Inevitably, therefore, the links with ancient Greece were a product of the imagination: an exemplary civilization, in its politics, arts, and culture. There was one problem, however: the Greeks, it seemed, enjoyed pederastic relations. And not only this: one of Athens' most famous teachers, Socrates, was attracted to boys. Daniel Orrells offers a fresh, original examination of how modern thinkers in Germany and Britain, who were so invested in a model of history that directly traced the European present back to an ancient Greek past, negotiated the tricky issue of ancient Greek pederasty.

Classical Culture and Modern Masculinity

Daniel Orrells

Table of Contents

Introduction1. Paiderastia and the Contexts of German Historicism2. Translating the Love of Philosophy: Jowett and Pater on Plato3. The Bewildering Case of John Addington Symonds4. Trying Greek Love: Oscar Wilde and E. M. Forster's Maurice5. Freud and the History of Masculinity: Between Oedipus and NarcissusConclusion: The Truth of Eros and the Eros for Truth